All this, the whole point of Shrove Tuesday, may have nothing to do with religion, or recovery from an addiction, or eating special meals, or the carnival celebrations of Mardis Gras ~ but what it should have to do with is acceptance of who we are, who we used to be, and who we wish to become in the future. Today I will take a long look at who I was and what I did, all the good, the bad and the ugly. I will try to accept and understand the past. I will acknowledge the reality of the past, and think about making my amends in the future. Today I will forgive myself for yesterday’s mistakes, and hope that others do too. I will think about being a ‘better’ man tomorrow than I was yesterday. My personal tools for doing this are the Four Noble Truths and the Noble Eightfold Path.

Whatever is begun in anger ends in shame.

There seems to be a lot of angry people in the world today, mostly angry that recent events didn’t turn out the way they wanted, and the future is looking very different to the way they wished it to be.

Angry people are not always wise. ~ Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice

Even very recent events are beyond our control. The past is the one part of our lives over which we have absolutely no influence, none whatsoever. No amount of regret, bad feelings, or anger can ever change what has already happened. All that anyone has any control over is what they do right now, and what they do right now will shape the future. If people choose to feel angry about the past, then they are denying themselves the opportunity to enjoy the present, and thereby create a better future.

Life is difficult and painful. This is the first of The Four Noble Truths. Things often don’t turn out the way we would like them to. Dwelling on the past and being angry about it isn’t necessarily the best way to make either the present or the future a better and happier place.

We don’t have to get angry, and we don’t have to stay angry. There are other and more positive emotions we can create from our anger. More often than not our anger does not get us what we want. Anger often turns inward and makes angry people bitter, twisted, and ineffectual.

Anger is an acid than can do more harm to vessel in which it is stored than to anything on which it is poured. ~ Mark Twain

We shouldn’t suppress our anger, but there are positive and constructive alternatives to aggressively inflicting our anger on other people. Intentionally hurting other people is almost universally a bad thing. All to often angry people won’t listen to calmer counsel. All too often angry people will not listen to opposing viewpoints. All to often angry people try to shout their opponents down.

If we don’t believe in freedom of expression for people we despise, we don’t believe in it at all. ~ Noam Chomsky

We can use anger to spur ourselves on to greater and better things. The energy, the adrenalin, the drive our anger arouses in us can be used to make positive and healing changes to the world around us. We all need to learn to tame our temper.

The best fighter is never angry. ~ Lao Tzu

We don’t always have to get mad. We don’t always have to get even. We don’t even have to tell other people that they are wrong, stupid, ignorant, uneducated, ungentlemanly, and childish. We can keep our opinions mostly to ourselves, and instead work quietly for the greater good.

We may not like recent events like Brexit, President Trump, Populism, and a lot of other crazy stuff going on in the World today, but getting angry and then belligerently expressing your anger probably isn’t the answer. More often than not, anger isn’t nice, it isn’t often pretty, and it isn’t really healthy. People die from too much anger.

And, depending on who has been in the wrong, then every once in a while, a sincere apology helps. Sometimes.

If you do something good, you may not get a good result. If someone does something bad or evil, they may not get a bad or evil result. It is not always possible to determine in advance the end results of our actions. And, no matter what we do there are some things we cannot change. For example, by your actions alone you cannot change another person, most certainly you cannot make someone love you.

So, what’s worse than knowing you want something, other than knowing you can never have it. ~ James Patterson

No matter how good and competent you are, you may suddenly find yourself up to your eyebrows in deep shit, and there may be nobody to blame. Sometimes things just happen. Sometimes there is nobody to blame, and sometimes there is nobody to thank. This is part of chaos theory.

Mankind has as much difficulty in accepting chaos ~ the disorder, confusion, and unpredictability of life ~ as a man has with unconditionally accepting himself. The sun rises, therefore there must be a Sun God. The Nile floods, there must be a Nile God. Some women are beautiful and loving, there must be a Goddess of Love. Man created Gods and Goddesses to escape from, and make sense of, the pain, disorder, confusion, and unpredictability that surrounds us.

A lot of people seem to see only what they want to see a lot of the time. Even people who should know better; sports referees, scientists, leaders of big businesses, religious leaders, politicians.., have a selective blindness when it comes to clearly seeing things they would prefer to ignore. Are people really blind to the facts so often, or are most people routinely deceiving themselves?

From my own experience, I can tell you that lying to yourself, self-deception, seeing things through rose-tinted spectacles, is the easiest lie of all. I spent most of my life believing that my own lies to myself were true.

Above all, don’t lie to yourself. The man who routinely lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to a point that he cannot distinguish the truth within him, or around him, and so loses all respect for himself and for others. And having no respect he ceases to love. ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky.

But, not seeing the truth of one’s own situation means that one’s life is built on a foundation of sand.

I can see more clearly now. Now my eyes are wide open and not clouded by self-deceptions. To truly live a good life, to try do what is right more often than doing what is easy, to really care about others, we must first of all know who we are. I discovered that I could not love the man I saw in the mirror, I could not live as a hollow man, I could not go through the rest of my life as a shadow. I had to know myself. And to know myself, first of all I had to fully accept the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. You know what? Sometimes accepting the truth is unbelievably painful.

Many people say that today’s social relationships are superficial. Perhaps that is because so few of us are open and honest with one another. How many will tell their loved ones ‘little white lies’ on the grounds that telling the whole truth would be hurtful? That may be socially acceptable, and it may arise from the seemingly good reason that the truth is going to big create problems, but ‘little white lies’ are still lies.

In the last few weeks I have come to believe that most lies are the result of fear. We tell ‘little white lies’ because we fear the consequences of telling the truth to our loved ones. We refuse to see what is right in front of us because we are afraid of what that means. It may be that I believed my own lies to myself because I was afraid to accept the pain of the real truths about who I am used to be.

Of all the liars in the world, sometimes the worst are our own fears. ~ Rudyard Kipling.

The first of the four Noble Truths is that Life is Suffering. Or, if you like; Life is Difficult and Painful. For some reason I have been able to accept that First Noble Truth, and now I can accept who I am, and now I can search for my own ultimate truth. With acceptance of myself I can now accept, understand, and begin to love others.

Many speak of love. I firmly believe there can be no love without truth.

Honest humility says that I am not a better man than any other. But, today I may be a far better man than I used to be.

When you haven’t slept for days, and you spend all your time in the depths of hopelessness, convinced that you are physically, mentally, and spiritually ill, and that there is no cure, no way out at all, then even the glimmer of an end of suffering will have you hanging on to that dim light like a drowning man clutches at a lifebelt.

So it was for me at a grim three o’clock in the morning on Monday, March 28th, 2016 ~ Easter Monday.

The single glimmer of hope in the darkness were these words; ‘Life is difficult. This is a great truth, one of the greatest truths.’ The opening words of a book called The Road Less Travelled.

This is also the first of the Four Noble Truths as revealed by the Buddha.

Being in the hopeless state I am, for today I have simplified these Four Noble Truths into versions I can understand;

Life is difficult and painful.

The causes of my problems and pain are my own cravings, lusts, and my blaming of others.

I can’t change what happens to me, but I can change what I do.

The path to freedom from suffering is through self-discipline in body, mind, and spirit.

The cruel trick my mind is already playing on me is that I keep forgetting what #3 says. I know there ‘s a #3, but I forget what it says.

No one saves us but ourselves. No one can and no one may. We ourselves must walk the path. ~ Gautama Buddha.

Dying is easy. Living takes work. Don’t try and do it all on your own.

You can only know what it is to need to live a spiritual life if you have been to one of two places. If you have somehow come to spirituality from a very good place in life then you know. The other place is Hell ~ some of us have been there. Working toward Spirituality on a daily basis makes life bearable for some, happier and more fulfilling for others, puts some others in touch with a higher plane, and for some others it stops them killing themselves. For some of us Spirituality is a matter of Life and Death.

I have absolutely no pleasure in the stimulants in which I sometimes so madly indulge. It has not been in pursuit of pleasure that I have periled life and reputation and reason. It has been the desperate attempt to escape from torturing memories, from a sense of insupportable loneliness and a dread of some strange impending doom. ~ Edgar Allan Poe

Learn some self-control and life will become less difficult as you won’t drop yourself into the shit so often.

Learn the true meaning of right and wrong and always try to do the right thing.

Of course this was not quite how Buddha explained it, but my version gives the essence.

The fourth Noble Truth is also known as the Truth of the Middle Path, or the Noble Eightfold Path. You don’t have to be Buddhist to aspire to have the qualities described in the Noble Eightfold Path;

Right Understanding

Right Thought

Right Speech

Right Action

Right Livelihood

Right Effort

Right Mindfulness

Right Concentration

Any high-powered executive would give his eye teeth to be able to follow the precepts of the Eightfold Path. Back in the day, if I could get half of those half right half of the time, I was King of the Hill. Sadly, most high-powered executives will be far too busy working, or going on time-management seminars, to give the matter of Spirituality any study at all.

For some others, such as drug addicts, compulsive gamblers, alcoholics, neurotics, among others, working toward the Noble Eightfold Path is what keeps them alive. These people often use a 12 step recovery programme to achieve spirituality ~ and the essence of these 12 step programmes is very close to the teachings of the Buddha. The snag is that organisations such as Alcoholics Anonymous are part-way to becoming a Religion, with all that implies.

However, if you are an alcoholic, drug addict…, then working toward spirituality by attending AA, NA meetings may just keep you alive. Every little action in working towards Spirituality is very, very easy, and unless you are suffering from an extreme character disorder, feels perfectly natural.

The hard part is that the path to true Spirituality means that you have to keep doing it, every minute of every day. The other hard part is that you will expose your soul to yourself. If you like you may substitute ‘deepest subconsciousness‘ for soul. What you will find down there are the good things, the ordinary things, the hurtful things, and the deepest, darkest, most evil parts of yourself.

Some of us didn’t want to go there. Some of us made half-hearted efforts. You know what? Not doing your utmost means you only get part of the good stuff. And, for some people that’s not enough to keep them alive.

That doesn’t mean that to do your utmost means you have to spend every second of every day actively working towards the Eightfold Path, or being involved in 12 step work. What it means is that you have to want to believe, and when you do your 12 step work, or working toward the Noble Eightfold Path, it needs to be taken seriously and honestly. Trust me, looking deep into the evil part of your soul isn’t something you can do for 12 hours a day ~ not unless you want to become completely insane. All of us have a Mister Hyde.

Like everything in Life, true spirituality also needs balance.

balance as shown by yin-yang

Personally, I looked for balance in the philosophy of yin and yang. This stuff apparently goes back about 3,000 years, and works on the premise that there are two sides to every coin. Each of us has two basic halves, male and female, and these need to be kept in balance. It’s more complicated than that ~ think of; night and day, sun and moon, winter and summer, fire and rain, life and death…

Without balance it’s very easy to go completely off the rails.

For example, my last divorce came about partly because my work / life balance was skewed in favour of work. My ‘patch’ was Europe and North America. I spent most of my time on aeroplanes, in hotels, in meetings, on more aeroplanes, trains, or in my car, and more hotels and more meetings. What with that and the affairs and drinking my good lady soon became my ex.

The only way I know to begin to achieve any balance whatsoever is to practice the doctrine of ‘everything in moderation’.

This has been much derided, however ‘everything in moderation’ doesn’t mean everything. Some things are just not on the list. If you take drugs then stop. If you smoke then cut down with the aim of stopping soon. If you drink every single day then stop drinking completely. If you drink a little too much then cut down, have at least two days a week when alcohol is off the agenda. Sugar in any form is mostly not on the list. Stay away from candy, cakes and cookies.

Tomorrow I will attempt to explain how to get started on your work toward Spirituality. Every person on this planet could greatly benefit from doing some of this.

You may trust me on this one, you do not want to hear the Raven quoth ‘Nevermore.’